NFL’s image: Bruised but improving after player scandals

Super Bowl XLIX is less than a week away, and the National Football League can use some help with its image after a series of unflattering scandals, according to a survey released this week.

The public has only a slightly favorable view of the NFL, according to the latest survey by YouGov BrandIndex, a company that tracks perceptions of various products, companies and sports.

Respondents gave professional football a “buzz score” of 12 on a scale of -100 to +100, with zero being neutral. Although not exactly a ringing endorsement, the NFL’s grade is an improvement from the fall, just after the league had fumbled its response to former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out his then-fiancee in a hotel elevator.

In early October, respondents gave the NFL a dismal buzz score of -40, based on nearly half of those surveyed saying they had a negative view. It was the league’s lowest grade in two years.

“The good news for the NFL is that Buzz has been on a steady increase since mid-December, as the regular season was wrapping up and the playoff match ups were being finalized,” according to the report.

YouGov’s BrandIndex is based on responses from 50,000 adults about whether they had a positive or negative view of the NFL based on what they had heard about it during the preceding two weeks.

In the latest survey, 28% of respondents said they had recently heard something positive about the NFL while 16% said they had recently heard something negative. Fifty-six percent said they had not heard anything positive or negative.

The NFL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lukewarm results comes after intense criticism of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for his initial handing of the Rice domestic abuse case. He decided to give Rice just a two-game suspension before eventually reversing course and extending it indefinitely after TMZ released a video of the assault. But a judge later overturned that indefinite suspension.

Prior to Rice, the NFL also suffered a tarnished image over Adrian Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings running back who was accused of beating his four-year old-son. Peterson is currently suspended from playing, but has can apply to be reinstated in April.

More recently, football fans have attacked the New England Patriots, one of this year’s Super Bowl teams, for “DeflateGate.” Someone on the team allegedly deflated game balls to make them easier to catch as a way to gain a slight advantage in the AFC Championship game versus the Indianapolis Colts.

The latest YouGov survey was done before the high-profile mystery about football air pressure. Therefore, any public backlash is not factored into the score.

Fading memories and excitement over the playoffs most likely have to do with the NFL’s improved image. But the league has also tried to polish its image by crafting a domestic abuse policy that increases punishment of players. As part of the effort, Goodell appointed a panel of domestic violence experts in September to consult with the NFL.

What Unilever shares with Google and Apple

When LinkedIn unveiled its data-fueled list of “the most sought-after employers in the world” a few months ago, the companies at the very top of the heap came as no surprise: Google, followed by Apple.

But coming in at No. 3—ahead of Microsoft and Facebook—was a very different breed of business: consumer-products giant Unilever, whose Dutch roots stretch back more than 140 years.

How did that happen? CEO Paul Polman is convinced that Unilever, which draws about 2 million job applicants annually, has turned into a magnet for recruiting and retaining workers because it is considered a place of purpose.

With an original vision to “make cleanliness commonplace,” Unilever has a long of history of thinking broadly about its mission. “It’s in the DNA of the company,” Polman says. But since taking the helm in 2009, he has more closely tied Unilever’s core strategy to having a positive impact on the environment and public health—and that, Polman says, is generating “enormous opportunities.”

Not long ago, Polman notes, the keeper of Dove, Lifebuoy, Pond’s, Lipton, Ben & Jerry’s, Hellmann’s, Knorr, and hundreds of other brands was “not on the radar screen in the U.S.” Last year, the company saw a 65% rise in job applications from American college students compared to 2013.

Meanwhile, Unilever’s employee engagement scores have climbed 12% since Polman started as CEO, according to the company. “If you peel the onion on that, it really is the pride people have,” Polman says. Putting purpose at the center of everything the corporation does is “incredibly motivating for our employees.”

This is especially the case for members of the Millennial generation, who, in the words of a study by consulting firm PwC, are eager “to contribute something to the world and … want to be proud of their employer.” Says Polman: If members of Gen Y don’t believe in what you’re doing, “they don’t want to work with you.”

None of this is shocking. “Humans, by their nature, seek purpose—to make a contribution and to be part of a cause greater and more enduring than themselves,” writes Daniel Pink in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Abraham Maslow, Douglas McGregor, Frederick Herzberg, Peter Drucker, and other great management thinkers said similar things more than half a century ago.

So, why don’t more companies behave the way Unilever does?

For one, many executives underestimate how difficult it is to build this kind of culture. That doesn’t mean every company needs to make grand pronouncements like Unilever has done. (Case in point: Polman has described his company as “the world’s biggest NGO.”) Having purpose simply requires being clear about how you’re delivering value to your customers while taking responsibility for whomever and whatever you touch.

The problem is, many companies are fuzzy about their mission. And all too often, “corporate social responsibility” amounts to nothing more than trotting out a few empty slogans, cutting some checks for charity, holding a day of service for employees, or setting up a CSR department that has no actual input into major decisions.

Unilever UN, by contrast, rigorously measures and reports its progress against three ambitious goals it aims to reach by 2020: helping more than a billion people across the globe improve their health and well-being; halving the environmental footprint of its products; and sourcing 100% of its agricultural raw materials sustainably while enhancing the livelihoods of those working across its supply chain.

What’s more, the company has committed to doing all this while doubling the size of its business, to about $100 billion. (Unilever derives nearly 60% of its sales from emerging markets.)

On the ground, these objectives manifest themselves in many ways, like the recent launch of the Toilet Board Coalition, a cross-sector group that is trying to find scalable, market-based solutions to what it calls “the sanitation crisis.” Could this Unilever-led effort make a difference in the lives of the 2.5 billion people around the world who lack access to a safe, clean toilet? Quite possibly. Could it also help Unilever sell more bottles of Domestos, its bathroom germ killer? Definitely.

Using the same logic, Unilever is trying to position Knorr bouillon as a weapon to combat food insecurity; Lifebuoy, a vehicle to promote good hygiene.

Making this tangible for those on the front lines isn’t easy. So, in late 2013, Unilever launched an online “Social Impact Hub” for its 174,000 employees to learn more about its myriad initiatives in this area. Unilever has also augmented its training programs so that workers at all levels can understand the company’s commitment to sustainability and how their own jobs fit in.

Being purpose-driven also demands that companies have a clear long-term vision. And that’s tough when investors are pushing executives to set their sights not much further out than the current quarter’s earnings or the day’s stock price. “We’ve created a rat race toward short-termism,” Polman says.

Standing up to this myopic mindset takes guts. Under Polman, Unilever has stopped reporting its quarterly profits, and it resists giving earnings guidance to financial analysts. His own compensation is tied to how well the company is tracking against its long-range sustainability metrics.

But Polman is relentless about the need for business to “serve society, rather than take from it”—and his message appears to be getting through. With it comes the “satisfaction of working for a company that generally tries to lead and do the right thing,” as one Unilever employee commented on Glassdoor.

That may sound a bit touchy feely. But in an era in which cultivating talent is increasingly essential, building a deep and authentic sense of purpose could be a company’s ultimate competitive advantage.

Rick Wartzman is the executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. Author or editor of five books, he is currently writing a narrative history of how the social contract between employer and employee in America has changed since the end of World War II.

Procter & Gamble sells soap brands to Unilever

Procter & Gamble PG has agreed to sell some of its soap brands to Unilever, the latest move by the consumer-products giant to slim down its product slate.

Unilever is buying all of Camay, and the Zest brand outside of the North America and Caribbean markets. The Anglo-Dutch company is also buying a manufacturing facility in Mexico that employs about 170 people. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of next year, were not disclosed.

P&G in August unveiled plans to shed up to 100 brands, as the company aims to focus on 70 to 80 brands that are responsible for a vast majority of sales and profit. P&G said the other businesses would either be discontinued, or divested. Camay — and most of Zest — now join Duracell to make up the growing list of assets P&G is casting aside.

On Thursday, Unilever, the maker of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, said that it has dropped its suit against Hampton Creek over the labeling of the San-Francisco-based startup’s Just Mayo product.

Unilever filed a suit against Hampton Creek in late October, alleging that Hampton Creek’s Just Mayo is not really mayonnaise because it does not contain eggs.

In a press release Thursday announcing the withdrawal of the suit, Unilever’s North America Vice President for Foods Mike Faherty said: “We applaud Hampton Creek’s commitment to innovation and its inspired corporate purpose. We share a vision with Hampton Creek of a more sustainable world. It is for these reasons that we believe Hampton Creek will take the appropriate steps in labeling its products going forward.” Unilever declined to comment beyond the statement.

Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick said he had been having positive talks with Unilever for several weeks.

“This lawsuit in so many ways was symbolic of the reasons we started Hampton Creek and didn’t want to budge,” Tetrick said in a call with Fortune. “We’re trying to ensure that the good thing is always the mainstream thing, and that it’s not pushed aside as the fancy substitute or alternative.”

In the initial court filing, Unilever acknowledged that Hellmann’s was losing share to Just Mayo. While there are other vegan products on the market that call themselves mayo or mayonnaise, they are more directly targeted toward health-conscious consumers. Hampton Creek purposefully does not stress that its product is vegan in order to appeal to a wider audience (while it sells its product in supermarkets like Whole Foods but also Wal-Mart).

Events took an unusual twist when it came to light that some of the products that Unilever labeled mayonnaise on its website were not following the same definition of mayonnaise it was holding Hampton Creek to. While the Unilever products at issue did contain eggs, they did not contain the 65% oil required to meet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s definition of mayonnaise.

“We never thought that big food manufacturers are our enemies,” Tetrick said. He added that the two companies don’t have any plans to work together, “but Unilever has people in its organization, including its CEO, who I don’t think just talk about sustainability. I think they actually believe it. I hope this experience will push it even more.”

Unilever was seeking damages and an injunction that would keep Hampton Creek from calling its product mayonnaise, touting it as superior to Unilever’s brands, and ultimately forcing it to take anything with Just Mayo labeling off the market.

Tetrick believes one reason Unilever dropped the suit is because management realized it was “antithetical to the kind of company they want to be.”

While Just Mayo is the company’s first product, Hampton Creek is indexing the world’s plants in an attempt to create a new breed of plant-based foods that are healthier and more environmentally friendly than conventional products. Cookies are next on the list.

More money for mayo: Food startup Hampton Creek raises $90 million in funding

San Francisco-based Hampton Creek raised $90 million in a strategic Series C financing round, the food technology startup said today. This latest investment brings the company’s total funding to $120 million.

Hampton Creek, which is best known for its egg-free condiment Just Mayo, is trying to index the world’s plants in an effort to come up with plant-based food products that are better for the environment and its customers’ health.

Horizons Ventures and Khosla Ventures, which have both previously invested in the company, led the round. New investors included Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff.

Hampton Creek’s CEO Josh Tetrick first met Benioff at Fortune’s 40 Under 40 event in San Francisco in October. (Tetrick made his debut on the list this year.) When Tetrick realized Benioff was at the party, he called his team and had them deliver their product to the venue for Benioff to taste test. “The only reason I know Benioff is because of your party,” Tetrick tells Fortune. “That started an incredible relationship.”

Tetrick says the financing will go toward its technology—such as better lab automation and patents—general expansion, and, as Tetrick says, “to make sure in everything we do, we’re not holding back.” He adds, “We don’t want to waste this moment.” Hampton Creek has garnered more name recognition in recent months amid a David vs. Goliath-type lawsuit with Unilever. The multinational behind Hellmann’s has sued the startup, alleging false advertising because Hampton Creek’s mayo does not contain eggs. Unilever has acknowledged that Hellmann’s is losing share to Just Mayo.

The company said the funding round also included investment from the TM Lin family, owners of Uni-President Enterprises—one of the largest food conglomerates in Asia—and Southeast Asia’s Far East Organization, which has a beverage operation. Tetrick says that the involvement from these two parties will help Hampton Creek build out its infrastructure in Asia so it can quickly expand in that part of the world when it’s ready.

I spoke with Pigozzi—a super-connected investor, art collector, photographer, and creative director and owner of clothing line LimoLand—to get his take on why he invested in Hampton Creek.

He first heard about the startup from his friend, Martha Stewart. After trying Just Mayo, Pigozzi reached out to Tetrick and the two discovered they had a lot in common, including an interest in Africa. Tetrick lived in Africa for seven years, and Pigozzi has the largest collection of contemporary African art in the world. “So from Martha Stewart to Africa to mayonnaise we made a connection. Very normal, no?” Pigozzi jokes.

Pigozzi’s Hampton Creek investment is his first in food beyond the restaurant industry. He usually sticks to high-tech companies like Facebook and video camera maker GoPro, but Pigozzi got interested in the science behind food from his friend, former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, whose goliath cookbook Modernist Cuisine is a deep dive into the science behind cooking.

Pigozzi was attracted to Hampton Creek’s plant-based approach. “It’s a very intriguing way of looking at making food,” he says. (Pigozzi notes that he doesn’t eat meat after 8 p.m.) He believes the company’s model also taps into a shift in consumer behavior, in which people are starting to pay more attention to how their diet impacts their health.

Hampton Creek also checked a box for Pigozzi in that it’s based in San Francisco. Pigozzi says he has a rule whenever he receives a business plan that if the address isn’t Palo Alto or San Francisco, he usually throws it in the trashcan. “The only only other address I like is a Chinese address because the thing for me is the two most innovative places in the world are Palo Alto and San Francisco, and then China where the market is so enormous.”

His only piece of advice to Tetrick? It’s not enough for it to be healthy. “It must taste good,” he says. “If it doesn’t taste good, just forget about it.”

Editor’s note: Hampton Creek originally stated that its funding round included investment from Uni-President Enterprises. In fact, the investment was made by the TM Lin family, which owns Uni-President, not the company itself. Fortune regrets the error.

Unilever, Cargill push to green their palm oil chain

Soon after he became CEO of Cargill last year, David MacLennan began casting around for ways he might build on the company’s decade-long effort to combat deforestation from soy production in Brazil.

He turned to palm oil, which now is the most widely used vegetable oil in the world. The company was a major trader in the commodity used in everything from cooking oil to dish soap to ice cream. Business was booming, but so were complaints that palm oil plantations had become one of the biggest threats to the dwindling tropical forests in Indonesia and Malaysia where much of the trade is based.

This summer, the Minnesota-based commodities trader rolled out a far-reaching policy promising that the palm oil that it produces, trades or processes will no longer come from deforested lands, carbon-rich peat lands or be linked to “exploitation of rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.”

And then at the U.N. climate summit in September, Cargill joined three of the world’s biggest palm oil producers to sign the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge. They committed to “sustainable palm oil that is deforestation free, respects human and community rights and delivers shareholder value.”

“We want to be visible and a leader in terms of progressing the improvement of the industry relative to sustainability and deforestation,” MacLennan told Fortune of the company’s commitment that dates back to 2004, when it became a founding member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. “There are a lot of companies that will just kind of go along for the ride. We don’t want be along for the ride. We want to be in front.”

The push to green the palm oil supply chain comes at a time when the demand for the commodity is set to double by 2030 and triple by 2050. Environmentalists have warned that failure to direct the expansion of plantations away from forest and into grasslands and other degraded land could lead to the extinction of endangered tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans. They are also are concerned that tearing down forest will contribute to global warming, since more than 10% of greenhouse gas emissions now come from deforestation.

Campaigns led by Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network have over the past decade targeted multinational consumer goods companies which are among the biggest buyers of palm oil. However, those efforts made little headway on the ground. Indonesia, for example, overtook Brazil in 2012 as the No. 1 deforester.

But as more sustainable oil reached the market and the technology for tracing commodities improved, Unilever, Cargill and Nestlé among strengthened their pledges in the past two years to use only green palm oil.

They were joined this year by more than 20 consumer goods companies—including Kellogg K, Mars, Procter & Gamble PG and Johnson & Johnson JNJ—which adopted zero deforestation policies. And in September at the U.N. climate summit, more than 30 companies including McDonald’s MCD and Wal-Mart Stores WMT committed to eliminate deforestation from their supply chain by no later than 2020.

It was part of a larger pledge at the summit by governments to half deforestation by 2020 and strive to end it by 2030. If fulfilled, the measure would eliminate between 4.5 million and 8.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year by 2030—the equivalent to removing carbon emissions produced by one billion cars.

“The last few months have seen a welcome race to the top,” Paul Polman, Unilever’s chief executive officer, said at the summit. “Consumers have sent companies a clear signal that they do not want their purchasing habits to drive deforestation and companies are responding.”

A less publicized but significant change has come further down the supply chain, with promises this year from many of the biggest plantation companies to change their ways.

Along with the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge, five producers this summer joined Cargill in signing the Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto. The companies have signed onto a no-deforestation pledge and the establishment of a system to create a “traceable and transparent supply chain.” The companies, most of them based in Malaysia, also agreed to a moratorium on converting the most environmentally important high carbon stock forests until a study can be done to determine where those stocks are located.

“Our efforts towards sustainable produced palm oil is an ongoing journey, one for which we are continuously learning and being challenged in,” one of the companies Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad (KLK) said in a statement to Fortune. “As our business, it is our responsibility to be part of the solution and we are proud of our efforts thus far. Our journey does not end here. KLK will continue to strive towards higher standards.”

These companies are also feeling pressure from buyers such as Unilever which want assurances they will be able to “source all of our palm oil traceable to known and certified sources by 2020.”

Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch multinational with 400 brands including Hellmann’s and Dove, will be opening the Sei Mangkei Oleochemical Plant in Indonesia later this year to better source green palm oil. It also has teamed up with the global research organization World Resources Institute, which operates a monitoring system called the Global Forest Watch. Using satellite data overlaid with a range of other information including locations of national parks and agriculture concessions, the system allows buyers and the public at large to identify threats to forest nearly in real time. For now, updates are now monthly but eventually will be more frequent.

And Unilever has started meeting regularly with its 200 suppliers to make the case that sustainability is good for the economy and its bottom line. One of those meetings took place last year in Singapore, just as haze from forest fires in neighboring Indonesia blanketed the city-state. The fires have become an annual headache across Southeast Asia – spreading as far as Thailand and the Philippines. They are blamed mostly on plantation owners and small-scale farmers burning virgin forest or clearing other land.

“The growers were there and we were discussing what else we could do to make a difference in the planet,” he said. “That was sort of like a wake-up call at the time for the growers to say, well, we are directly or indirectly burning these palm oil trees. It was clear for them, as much for us and many other companies, that the air is changing.”

Unilever and Cargill are also investing heavily in training farmers in sustainable agriculture practices, be that more efficient water use, reduction of pesticides or better land use practices. Cargill, for example, has trained more than 100,000 cocoa farmers in West Africa in sustainable practices and pays them a higher rate for implementing those measures—enough to cover the cost of a new school and hospital in one village. Similar programs have been launched with its coops of oil palm farmers in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Taken together, the share of palm oil under zero deforestation commitments has grown from 0 to about 60% in the last year. Plantations under commitments cover an area the size of Portugal and the resulting savings to the planet is an estimated reduction of 400-450 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2020.

“This is a watershed moment on palm oil because enough of the building blocks for shifting the market are in the process of coming into place,” said Craig Hanson, the WRI’s global director of food, forests, and water programs. “You have buyers making commitments. You have got now suppliers and traders making commitments,” he said. “You also have greater transparency which is critical for people following through on commitments and for holding folks accountable to those commitments.”

Kit Batten, USAID’s Global Climate change coordinator, called the growing commitments “exciting.” She credited the shift to increased consumer awareness as well as the use of hi-tech tools to keep suppliers honest. “For the first time eve,r thanks to satellite technology and a lot of other new innovations, there is the ability to have that kind of traceability and transparency in supply chains that just didn’t really exist before,” said Batten, whose agency has provided $5.5 million to the Global Forest Watch as part of a campaign to eliminate deforestation from palm oil production.

But Batten and others acknowledge there is plenty to be “untangled” in a supply chain that still excludes 40% of the players and doesn’t do enough to separate legal and illegal oil palm when it is refined, processed and then shipped.

Two investigations—one released in September by a coalition of environmental groups called Eyes on the Forest and another by Rainforest Action Network—illustrate the challenge ahead. The Eyes on the Forest investigation found scores of palm oil producers in Indonesia who have signed sustainability commitments caught sourcing oil palm from illegal plantations. Illegal produced palm oil from forests favored by endangered Sumatran tigers ended up in facilities of four producers as well as at ports these producers use to ship their products.

The RAN investigation implicated 40 palm oil growers operating in an Indonesia conservation area that his home to endangered orangutans as well as Sumatran tigers, rhinos and elephants. One major crude palm oil mill was caught sourcing from these growers and three large traders also sourced from them.

“At the moment, there is no traceability at the plantation level in the global palm oil supply chain,” said Gemma Tillack, RAN’s agribusiness campaign director.

“It stems from the fact that palm oil is a commodity. The very nature of a commodity is that it is bought and sold in large quantities all over the world,” she said. “In order for it to be cheap, these systems have not been put in place. The system-wide transformation that we are hoping to achieve is essentially changing the very nature of how this commodity is produced, traded and sold onto the global market.”

Recognizing the system gaps, Cargill and Unilever are both set to roll out measures aimed at shoring up the traceability of their supply chain in the coming weeks. Cargill, in its first palm oil progress report, plans to announce that suppliers will be monitored and subjected to field assessments, that a grievance process will be set up to deal with potential violations of its palm oil policy and a third party mediator hired to deal with any issues.

“We are undertaking this effort in a smart, deliberate and technical way,” MacLennan told reporters at the U.N. summit.

“We want to do this the right way, and we understand that this sort of commitment can’t be limited to just select commodities or supply chains,” he said. “This is bigger than anyone one company, group or country. It will take years of cooperation between government, civil society and the private sector along with farmers, local peoples and consumers.”

Unilever also unveiled similar plans to Cargill at a Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil meeting last month in Malaysia. It promised to trace the palm oil used all the way down to the mills and require its suppliers to do the same. It also plans to map out plantations located within 30 to 50 kilometers of those mills to ensure they are complying with sustainable standards.

From high-minded to high value

Unilever hadn’t grown significantly in years when the board brought in Paul Polman from Nestlé as CEO in 2009. Despite the recession, he sparked rapid growth and record profits, focusing especially on emerging markets, where the company has found opportunity selling its household products in tiny quantities at prices of 10¢ to 15¢. Of its 400-plus brands, those with annual revenues over 1 billion euros include Dove, Lipton, Lux, and Hellmann’s (recently embroiled in a tempest in a jar over the exact meaning of “mayo”; see Fortune.com). Polman, 58, has attracted wide praise for putting environmental and social goals prominently at the center of Unilever’s strategy—and making it pay. He talked recently with Fortune about audacious goals, attracting young employees, and more:

We’re seeing signs of a global economic slowdown. You have two billion customers around the world. What are they telling you?
There are some forces coming together that we’re all struggling with. Clearly, the money that we’ve pumped in since the 2008 – 2009 crisis has not given us the growth. If anything, it has made a few people richer but with a lot of people excluded. You see that in the U.S., and you see it in Europe. Markets are stable or down, if you look at the broad consumer market. And then the developing markets have seen a significant slowdown over the last year or two.

And so we see a global economy that used to grow at 4% or 5% levels, and it probably is now growing at 2% or 3% levels. The latest forecast from the IMF and OECD is 3.1%. And any forecast is coming down. So we have to be realistic now.

And that forecast is your expectation, too, I gather.
We’ve always warned for that, and often have been called pessimists, but it’s better to be a realist, and that’s what we’re trying to be.

It’s almost five years now since you announced a goal of doubling the size of the company while reducing its environmental footprint. Is that still looking feasible?
It was indeed an audacious goal, but I always believed it was more of a mindset issue. One of our goals is sustainably sourcing all our agricultural materials. We were at 10% and were seen as one of the more forward-looking companies, always No. 1 in the Dow Jones sustainability index. Now we’re at 50%. It took us 150 years to get to 10% and four years to get to four times higher. If you set these audacious goals, you get people out of a comfort zone, that makes them do amazing things.

That goal caused quite a stir inside and outside the company when you announced it. What have you learned since then about the effects of doing something that big?
If you set more audacious goals, and you get people out of their comfort zone, the first thing you have to realize is that people are actually capable of doing more than we all thought possible. We’ve all learned a lot. Also that you can run a business and make a positive contribution to society. There doesn’t need to be a tradeoff. I think the crisis in 2008 – 2009 has made many people realize that the economic progress that we had seen has been tremendous, has lifted many people out of poverty, but has also come at an enormous price — enormous levels of government and private debt, enormous levels of overconsumption, and frankly, leaving too many people behind.

In this increasingly connected world, you see more and more people able to aggregate their forces and make their displeasure known. That’s one of the reasons why we have significantly more geopolitical conflicts now. Businesses are under the same scrutiny as governments, and so if you want to be successful in tomorrow’s world, you have to reach a higher level of trust, which requires more transparency. You have to make positive contributions to issues like climate change, food security, and unemployment.

The U.N. Foundation just gave you its Champion for Global Change Award. Can the U.N. be helpful in reaching some of these goals?
The U.N. is increasingly important. Obviously, the tragic Ebola crisis is one of the examples where people from the U.N. are doing heroic work. But what you basically see is that the political system which we created to rule the world dates back to Bretton Woods, and it’s not really functioning anymore as well as it should. One of the reasons you see these geopolitical conflicts is because many politicians have a hard time internalizing these global challenges to their own constituents, and the U.N. is playing an enormous role there to keep a global moral framework that we can all at least aspire to. The U.N. put out the original millennium development goals, which had as a simple objective to halve the number of people living in poverty, which at that time was defined as $7.25 a day or less, and we’ve actually achieved that goal over the last 15 years. And one of the reasons we’ve achieved that is because of this moral framework that the U.N. put out that has served as a beacon for many governments, companies, and other institutions.

Now there are opportunities to make the U.N. work better, and that is why we as companies via the U.N. Global Compact and other institutions try to be part of that. It doesn’t serve anything to criticize if you don’t want to be part of the solution.

You’ve said you’re simplifying Unilever. How do you simplify a company that’s in 190 countries?
You do it with good people. People are driven by an enormous level of energy if the purpose is high. People really want to make a bigger difference to life than just growing market share or improving profits. We’re showing that you can do that while at the same time satisfying your shareholders. For example, Lifebuoy is one of our hand-washing soaps. It’s growing at double digits because it really is helping children [in emerging markets] reach the age of 5, through the simple act of hand washing. That unleashes enormous energy.

If you bring these strong purposes to your brands, it actually makes the brands more relevant, because what you have to watch in a big company like this is that you don’t fall in love with yourself and become too internally focused. If you can move that purpose outside of the company, outside of your own interests, and put the interests of society first, which actually should be the purpose of any company, then I think you unlock that energy.

You’re investing more in leadership development and have opened a new center in Singapore aimed at that goal. What’s the larger human capital strategy?
My job really is not really to hit the numbers every quarter and be a hero, because that’s actually easy to do. My job is to be sure that this company is even stronger than what I inherited and can last for many hundreds of years more. One of the most important things is to invest in human capital. So one of the key things I look at is, Are we a desired employer or not? That’s very important to me. On LinkedIn we’ve become the third-most-looked-up company after Google and Apple, which is actually quite amazing because Unilever is not really a brand in itself. The company is very much in demand, especially among young people.

When you came to the company, you were an outsider CEO who changed the strategy. What did you learn about how to make changes of that magnitude in a global enterprise?
Probably anybody in my position would have made the same changes, because a lot of things in the world were changing that our predecessors did not have to deal with. The growth of the East, the enormous speed of the digitization of society. Because of economic growth, the pressures on the planetary boundaries — these are all factors coming together in these past 10 or 15 years and putting pressure on businesses and requiring businesses to change. Are we the ones that have that ultimate wisdom to do that better than anybody else? I don’t think so.

And my job really has been to, first of all, understand the values that make this company work and be successful over the last 150 years. Having come in as an outsider, I spent enormous amounts of time understanding what works in this company. It has always been a company that is driven by doing good, from its early days under Lord Lever. Throughout its history, you see that.

We’ve just been able to capture it and link it to our business growth. My job is probably the simplest in the company, believe it or not, because it’s really focused on trying to make everybody else successful. And then you see what this enormous energy is that you can unleash.

The strategy changes are probably the least important changes. It’s just bringing this company back to the core of what made it successful in the first place.

Justice for mayo? Round two in the condiment conflict

Some two weeks ago multinational behemoth Unilever sued San Francisco-based startup Hampton Creek, claiming that its vegan Just Mayo product—which Unilever acknowledges is taking market share—is not really mayonnaise because it doesn’t contain eggs. Hampton Creek has countered that it is not violating the standard of identity because it calls its product “mayo.”

Here’s the latest twist: Some of the mayonnaise products made by Unilever, the company behind Hellmann’s and Best Foods brands, don’t follow the definition of mayonnaise that it’s attempting to hold Hampton Creek to, either. The company has made changes to its website, apparently leaving it with an egg-based product on its face.

In one instance, Unilever altered two customer reviews on its Hellmann’s Olive Oil Mayonnaise Dressing page, adding the word “dressing” to comments that hadn’t previously used the word. Although the product contains eggs, it is not 65% oil, which is also required under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s definition of mayonnaise. (Unilever has since deleted the two altered reviews.)

A Unilever spokesperson emailed Fortune the following comment:

All of our products in the marketplace are labeled very clearly and comply fully with FDA regulations. Consumers know what they’re getting. We received a letter from Hampton Creek raising concerns about our website content. The next week we made changes to the website. Two consumer comment excerpts in the advertising section of our website were inadvertently edited when they should have been removed. There’s a big contrast between us and Hampton Creek—we took action and they still refuse to make changes to their misleading label.

Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick tells Fortune that the company sent a letter to Unilever on Nov. 4 pointing out a number of labeling issues on Unilever’s website. He says Hampton Creek did not hear back, but last Friday his team noticed that Unilever had made some of the changes to the site.

Unilever also added the word “dressing” when making reference to its Canola Cholesterol Free Mayonnaise on its website. To take you deep into mayonnaise regulations, Tetrick noted that product labels can violate the standard of identity when they make a nutrient claim like low fat, but “cholesterol free” is not considered a nutrient claim.

“The truth is the whole thing is confusing,” Tetrick says. That’s why, he says, he’s eager to be in talks with regulators. “We understand it’s important to be on the right side of the standard of identity,” he adds. “We believe we are, and we continue to have important and productive conversations with the FDA.”

Mayonnaise wars: Unilever files suit against startup Hampton Creek

Unilever has a beef with San Francisco-based food startup Hampton Creek—and it’s all about eggs.

Well actually, a lack of eggs.

Unilever subsidiary Conopco has filed a civil suit in New Jersey federal court against Hampton Creek, alleging false advertising and unfair competition. It claims that because Hampton Creek’s Just Mayo product doesn’t contain any eggs, it shouldn’t be called or marketed as mayo or mayonnaise.

“Despite its name, Just Mayo does not contain just mayonnaise,” reads the complaint. “In fact it is not mayonnaise at all. Rather, it is a plant-based vegan alternative to real mayonnaise.”

Hampton Creek’s Just Mayo competes with Unilever’s Best Foods and Hellmann’s brands. The claim acknowledges that Just Mayo is stealing market share from Hellmann’s.

The civil action alleges that Just Mayo neither tastes like nor binds ingredients and sauces together the way mayo should. That, along with what it calls “unsubstantiated superiority claims” have “caused consumer deception and serious, irreparable harm to Unilever and to the product category the industry has taken great care to define in a way consistent with consumer expectations.”

In addition to damages, Unilever is seeking an injunction against Hampton Creek, which would keep the company from calling its product mayonnaise, marketing it as superior to Unilever’s brands, and ultimately forcing it to withdraw anything with Just Mayo branding from the market.

Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick says that he does not believe that the company is in violation of what’s called “the standard of identity” for mayonnaise and plans to fight it. But he also thinks the lawsuit is an opportunity to make a larger point. “This is a conversation around how this system of food needs to be rethought,” he says. “You’ve got to make it easier for innovators to innovate and for people to eat in a way that’s ultimately better.”

Tetrick thinks that Hampton Creek—which is focused on making plant-based products to improve the food system—will likely be the target of other lawsuits as it branches into new products. “It’s just kind of the nature of change,” he says.

Vegan products branded as mayo that pre-date Hampton Creek are on the market, but those offerings are more clearly targeting health-conscious consumers. Tetrick has made a point of going after a larger demographic with Just Mayo, selling his product not just in the Whole Foods of the world but also the Wal-Marts. The company has historically downplayed that Just Mayo is vegan in order to appeal to a broader population. That also makes the product more of a direct threat to Unilever.

Tetrick shared an email with Fortune that he received from Unilever’s Global VP of marketing only days after the suit was filed. It read: “Love what you are doing…Very much in line with our Unilever Project Sunlight #brightfuture philosophy.”

Tetrick made his debut appearance on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list earlier this year.

Unilever has not responded to requests for comment. We’ll update if they do.

For companies to grow, why bigger is not always better

Growth has long been the imperative in economics and business. As the world’s population tops 7 billion, and soon 8 and 9, it’s becoming clear that the best performing organizations, and perhaps countries, will be less defined by absolute size and more defined by the speed and agility that comes from clarity of purpose, strategic insight and decisive action. As the scale of human organizing expands to unprecedented levels, the winners will be those people, organizations, and countries that can: focus on what matters most to their core stakeholders; rapidly process new information, learn from it, and then thoughtfully and deliberately act amid the complexity.

Think Airbnb. They’ve experienced explosive growth – and not by the traditional means of buying or building more properties. They did it by understanding what really mattered to those booking hotel rooms. They did it by studying the emergence of the “sharing economy.” And, absent a vast footprint of physical assets, they did it by acting decisively to create a whole new model for meeting this traditional need – a model that delivers competitive advantage through scale but not in a traditional sense of physically controlled properties. Indeed, Airbnb not only created a new model, it created a new market.

In today’s global marketplace that operates 24/7, the traditional barriers to entry are falling, and traditional conceptualizations of growth as increasing in size and span of control are losing their potency. Market and customer access have become easier; product and idea life cycles are shrinking as ideas, data, and knowledge travel fast and openly across the Internet. Competitive advantage gained from expensive product innovations is shorter-lived. And brands are losing their stickiness amid an onslaught of data, ideas and emotional triggers that compete for human attention, loyalty and spending.

In light of these changes, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing new approaches to driving growth throughout the Fortune 500. One example is the recent spate of mammoth splits at traditional powerhouse firms including Motorola MSI, Kraft KRFT and Abbott. In each case, powerful CEOs chose to divide the size of their companies (and spans of control) in half in order to increase focus and speed growth. For the same reasons, portfolio rationalizations are now commonplace; e.g., Procter & GamblePG, ITW and Unilever UN. And even more recently, expensive inversions have become in vogue, including firms like Eaton and Abbvie.

CEOs of traditional mega-conglomerates are literally slicing up and uprooting their organizations in order to fuel growth. And they have to because the successes of companies like Airbnb and Uber have shown that smaller firms with simpler and more nimble infrastructures can win – just look at the market caps being attached to these asset-lite firms. This is not to suggest that building scale and pursuing acquisitions are no longer important drivers of growth. It does mean however that these strategies will be held to greater scrutiny as the idea that “bigger is always better” becomes quaint.

And who is going to lead these firms of the future? We’ll need leaders with deep insight into their organizations’ markets, customers and capabilities; leaders who create and leverage more flexible architectures for connecting and collaborating; leaders who foster cultures based on constant self-scrutiny, innovation and an ability to forge unexpected partnerships; leaders who can keep pace with new market opportunities and ever-more-aggressive investor herds; leaders who can inspire new kinds of growth.

Sally Blount is dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.